Chapter 7

A Leap of Faith

Dobbing might be unAustralian but it’s something we do well, especially if it involves someone we don’t like or think unworthy and we get the chance to put them in on the quiet. In fact, hotlines for anonymously ratting on tax cheats, druggies, rubbish dumpers and other undesirables are said to attract hundreds of thousands of calls each year, nationwide.

Denise, however, was facing a somewhat more complicated dilemma.

Michael Guider wasn’t a stranger or even just a neutral acquaintance. She’d been friendly with him for three years, much of which they’d spent trying to stop Sydney’s archaeological rarities being entombed under asphalt and concrete. It had been a tough and sometimes emotional fight and Guider had never expected anything in return for getting down in the trenches with her and playing his part.

The day Denise had stumbled upon the amazing cluster of axe grooves beside Caddies Creek at Kellyville was a case in point. He’d been there to share the discovery with her. They’d gone hours wading through paddocks of waist-high grass in 40-degree heat when he’d decided to go back and fetch their water bottles. Instead of following, though, Denise drifted towards a grove of paperbark trees

‘We’d come across several early tools in surface deposits of mudstone, silcrete and quartz, along with one or two grooves on some small sandstone ledges,’ she explains. ‘But there was a lot of ground to cover and I knew we could be on the threshold of finding something very significant. There was a large stand of paperbarks fanning out from the creek, which, it occurred to me, would have provided an ideal natural shelter so close to the water.

‘Instead of following Michael, I wandered over to them, in particular towards the largest specimen, which looked to be hundreds of years old.

‘After checking around the tree, I figured we could call it a day, but looking down I realised I was standing on scores of carefully ground scars, etched into a flat sandstone outcrop. Ten of the grooves were the largest ones I’d ever witnessed. As I called out the find, Michael rushed back to join in the excitement. He got down and slowly counted more than a hundred grooves with stone tools resting beside them.

‘He’d been part of something I considered really worth remembering, cherishing even.’

Denise realised that what was ahead of her wasn’t going to be as simple as rushing to the nearest phone box and telling the police she thought someone she knew was a bit ‘sus’. If she was right about Guider, she was about to inform on a child killer, not someone who’d taken a sickie to go to the beach or hosed down his driveway during water restrictions. There was no question she’d have to front up in person and lay things out properly and precisely. The prospect of taking such a step was hardly enticing.

She also wondered how truly confident she could be that Guider had done the things he’d been accused of. The detective from Manly hadn’t left much room for doubt during their exchange on the phone, but surely there were two sides to every story.

Despite Guider having said he’d known Tess and Samantha Knight, what palpable evidence had she of him having anything to do with the poor little thing’s disappearance? She hadn’t even learned about the extraordinary connection between them first hand.

The more Denise thought about it, however, the more the negative side of the equation gnawed at her conscience. Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine Guider willingly harming a child, but the assault allegations against him were undeniably damning. And the thought of him even knowing anything of what had happened to Samantha Knight sent a chill down her spine.

She asked herself whether there’d been any clues, any warning signs. Visions came flooding back of the rock fall episode near the M2 and Guider’s tantrum in Marramarra National Park about wanting to go home. So too, quite suddenly, did another off-beat incident; something Denise hadn’t previously paid any real attention to.

The afternoon they’d made their big find on Caddies Creek, she’d stopped at McDonald’s on Windsor Road at Northmead, on the way home. She shunned fast food herself but realised Guider had to have been famished after such an exhilarating and draining day.

They parked and went in. Trade seemed fairly brisk and Denise scanned the room for an out-of-the-way table. Being something of a Maccas regular, however, Guider headed straight for the booth near the paper rack. He plucked up the folded front section of the Herald and laid it out across the table, so she followed suit and took one of the leftover segments for herself.

‘Instead of talking, we sat and read while we ate,’ Denise says. ‘After a little while, Michael apparently looked up but I didn’t really notice. Instead of saying something, though, he then reached across and tapped me on the arm.

‘“Isn’t she stunning?” He nodded, staring back over my shoulder. “Who?” I asked, swivelling around to get a look at whoever he was talking about.

‘“No,” he said, gesturing more emphatically. “Down there … down there.”’

Lowering her gaze, Denise strangely found herself peering at a small girl with beautiful long red hair, standing with her mother in the register queue. She supposed the child was about six or seven years old.

Now, as she sat in her kitchen agonising over how she was going to explain herself to the police, the recollection gave Denise an overwhelming sense of the creeps. Guider hadn’t meant to use a suggestive word like ‘stunning’ to describe the child to her, she realised. He couldn’t help himself. It was a slip-up.

Knowing Guider as she did, there was another issue that troubled her as well. Locked up and facing years without being able to visit the bush, he’d be distraught. If he had committed the crimes they said he had, he would have to learn somehow to deal with it. But if he couldn’t, she believed there was a very real chance Guider would attempt suicide. In the event he was successful, he might very well be taking the truth about Samantha to the grave. That wasn’t something she was prepared to allow.

Convincing the police of all this, though, was another matter. There was the obvious possibility they’d be unwilling to listen because she couldn’t offer them hard proof. In fact, if they recognised her from one of the HEAT interviews in the local Hills News or some of the other bits and pieces she’d done, they might just write her off altogether as a greenie ratbag.

With Di Michel’s bombshell of several hours ago still ringing in her ears, she decided to call for back up.

Rob Allen was one of the dozens of dedicated environmentalists who’d read what Denise was saying about the Hawkesbury and M2 in the papers and had offered to help. The thing that stood him apart, though, was that he happened to be quite a senior environmental health officer with the public service. As the campaigns got a roll on, he’d contributed a series of impressive submissions on air and water quality issues that were scientifically referenced and impossible to dispute. He was also friendly with Di and, through her, knew of Guider.

Rob was still at work when Denise rang. He agreed with her almost immediately that going to the police was the right option and that his presence would add authenticity to the process. Yes, he’d certainly tag along if it made what she had to do any easier, he said. But he’d first have to go home to change and grab a bite to eat. He reckoned he could meet her around nine o’clock.

***

Of an evening at least, Castle Hill police station is usually only a few minutes’ drive from the Hofman house. That night, though, it felt like hell and back.

Denise was absolutely overcome, terrified. To be doing what she was about to do to someone who’d given so much for such a good cause, was a huge deal. But by that time, nothing was going to stop her. When she walked through the doors of the station with Rob about 9.20 p.m., she glanced at the ragtag collection of missing person files pinned to a large bulletin board on one of the side walls.

Samantha’s face peered back at her from among them. She took it as an omen.

They asked for the detective on duty and were met by a shortish, middle-aged man who introduced himself as Sergeant Bob Sawyer. He led them into a small private room. After asking Denise to simply start at the start, he listened to everything she had to tell and assured her she’d done the right thing. He said the details she’d provided constituted ‘good information’ and he promised to pass them on to the detectives handling Samantha’s case. Sawyer also agreed that the department of corrective services should be notified regarding her concern that Guider might try to take his own life.

For his part, Rob reinforced Denise’s story where possible and passed on his full name and address to enable further contact. Denise, however, insisted Sawyer only know her first name and refused to identify Di Michel to him at all.

‘The reason for my caution was more intuitive than anything but I later realised it was because I’d been thinking of contacting Michael myself to see how talkative he was,’ she explains. ‘The last thing I therefore wanted was him finding out what I’d been up to behind his back.’

It probably wasn’t an ideal move in terms of winning the confidence of the police but Denise figured it would have to do for now.

Stepping back into the foyer, she stopped in front of the poster of Samantha that she’d noticed on the way in.

‘Sam, I will find out what happened to you and the world will know,’ she whispered. ‘I am so sorry that your life was cut short but I intend to get to the truth of the matter and the person who hurt you will suffer.’

Walking out to their cars, she and Rob instantly came alive again with relief. It was like a weight had been lifted from their shoulders; as though they’d delivered a top-secret message behind enemy lines and eluded capture.

Yet the euphoria didn’t last. Only a day or so later, Denise began worrying that there might not be any meaningful response to the information before it was too late and Guider decided to attempt self-harm. There was no question Sawyer had taken the trouble to hear her out but why hadn’t he asked for a written statement? Why didn’t he at least request that she make herself available to be contacted by the investigators? In the light of day, things didn’t quite make sense.

The whole episode had taken just 20 minutes. Had she been so anxious to unload her story that she hadn’t made sure Sawyer understood how important it was? Had she perhaps been naïve about the whole thing?

One thing was for sure, though, Denise wasn’t going to die wondering about it.

‘Basically, I thought, “bugger it”,’ she recalls. ‘If they didn’t want to make something of it, why not take up the cudgel myself? As well as writing Michael a letter, I asked myself what was stopping me from going and fronting him about things in person, in prison.

‘He knew me and trusted me, didn’t he? With a little patience and persuasion, I thought, I just might convince him that if he was responsible for Samantha’s death the only way for God to forgive him and for the girl’s parents to be freed from the pain of not knowing was for him to talk about it.’

Then again, she started wondering about whether the police did actually have something planned and were trying to keep it hush hush. What then? Perhaps turning up out of the blue at Goulburn jail might be throwing a rather heavy-duty spanner in the works. One way or the other, she had to find out what was going on.

It took a couple of attempts to locate the right person but Denise soon found herself speaking to Detective Sergeant Adam Purcell. Tall, affable and well regarded within the ranks, ‘Gus’ was one of Bondi’s senior investigators. He’d inherited responsibility for Sam’s case by default, after it had long since grown cold, and it was just one of a number of matters he was expected to juggle at the one time. In truth, it was a long way from the top of Purcell’s pile.

The phone call took him by surprise. Sawyer had issued a briefing note, summarising Denise’s story after she’d given it to him on 6 March. Yet, for whatever reason, it wouldn’t arrive at district command headquarters in Surry Hills for almost a fortnight. Another week would then pass before the document finally lobbed on Purcell’s desk.

No drama, though. As Denise rehashed the essentials, he jotted them down and explained that whatever was on its way from Castle Hill would no doubt soon arrive. In the meantime, if anything further came to hand she was welcome to ring back, by all means.

One phone conversation led to several. Purcell wasn’t in a position to share any operational details with her but Denise decided over the next week or so to tell him that she planned both to write to Guider and to visit him. Surprisingly, he had no objection and promised that when and if the police made their move, they’d protect her confidentiality. On that score, she had ‘nothing to fear’, he said.

Denise also made a point of contacting Guider’s jailers within the corrections department to explain the situation and beg that they keep a close eye on his mental state. They assured her it was a priority.

***

March 26, 1996 was a miserably cold Saturday. Denise woke early and thought of an excuse to give Brian and the kids for why she’d be out most of the day. Without telling a soul the real reason, she fuelled up her much-loved 1970 Ford Cortina, headed southwards along the city’s western reach, taking the Hume Highway past Liverpool and Campbelltown, and kept going. Two-and-a-bit hours later, she arrived in Goulburn.

‘It was the longest trip my poor little car had ever made,’ she recalls. ‘I remember praying all the way that it wouldn’t break down and that I wouldn’t get lost. When I finally climbed out from behind the wheel, my legs were shaking.’

Designed in 1884 by colonial architect James Barnet, the town’s sandstone maximum security prison cast an uninviting presence and Denise felt it keenly the moment she stepped through the front gates. But it was nothing compared to the experience of actually seeing Guider face to face.

It was evident that, under the circumstances, he’d assumed they would never meet again. In fact, he told her that among everyone he knew, he least expected she would be the one to make the trip. Yet here she was.

After Denise was shown to a kind of common area and instructed to wait for several minutes until Guider was brought out, they were taken together into a room away from everyone and allowed to talk for about three-quarters of an hour while one of the warders stood watch.

Denise found she was so overwrought by the occasion that any notion of asking Guider hard questions went out the window. They chatted mostly about how he’d been treated and whether he was managing to cope since his arrest. He couldn’t have been more grateful that she’d taken the time to come.

‘I found my eyes wandering to the thick iron bars, the lack of sunlight, the marked sandstone walls and oversized keys around the guards’ necks and attached to their leather belts,’ Denise remembers.

‘When a door opened, the sound echoed around the cold room and I wondered how anyone could escape from such a nightmare. I took comfort in the fact that I was someone who would never break the law but I found myself feeling sorry for anyone who did and had to pay the price.’

Denise was so affected by the encounter on the way back to Sydney she almost convinced herself she’d been wrong about everything. Guider had definitely put his best side on show amid the dreadful conditions and had come across as very believable.

His first letter thanking her for her support arrived several days later. It was typically penned in neat cursive with few, if any, mistakes and curiously offered Denise advice on how she might better deal with feeling stressed by sharing his own remedy for such occasions. He’d obviously noted her discomfort during the visit.

‘I always used to go to a special place, usually somewhere in the bush, to sit quietly and become one with my surroundings,’ he wrote. ‘I have several (as the Koori would say) sacred places scattered around Sydney. Some I have been visiting since my early childhood and, amazingly, to most people they would just be non-descript bits of bush.’

It was a theme he’d repeat in his next missive, dated 28 April: ‘That’s all that keeps me going, locked in prison cells, the hope and faith that one day in the not too distant future I can go “bush again” with friends like you. Speaking of the bush, I remember the first time we went to the big cave together at Darling Mills Creek, with all those wattles in blossom, it was so beautiful. And when we sat in that cave, which has been confirmed as having been occupied over 10 000 years ago, I can still remember it like yesterday.’

Guider also included a poem about the occasion, called ‘Motorway Madness’.

Wattles in blossom, soft humming bees

Down in the valley, hidden by trees

Water cascading, across ancient stones

Invisible birds, sing harmonious tones.

Wind in a whisper, softly will blow

Drowned by the waterfall, rushing below

Butterflies dancing, making no sound

Lizards are sunning, themselves on the ground

Clouds once reflected, in crystal clear pools

Soon will all vanish, to money mad fools

Destroying the bush, they don’t understand

By building a road, to cover the land.

His writing exhibited such innocence, Denise continued to be confounded by him. Only much later did it dawn on her that Guider was assuming each of his dispatches would be read before being resealed by the prison guards. He was using them to try to gull everyone into thinking he was such a caring bloke he couldn’t possibly be capable of doing what he’d been accused of.

***

Sawyer’s report arrived at Bondi on 27 March – a Sunday, of all days – according to police records. It contained several anomalies, including Guider misspelled throughout as ‘G-u-i-l-d-e-r’ and mentioned the possibility that he considered himself to be of Aboriginal extraction, which definitely wasn’t something Denise and Rob had put forward. It also stated that Denise’s unidentified friend (Di) had been out bushwalking with Guider near Manly when he’d told her about Samantha, not on the Lane Cove River as had been the case. By way of conclusion, Sawyer simply said Guider had claimed ‘that he had known Samantha Knight, that she was a pretty girl and that he still regularly visited the Bondi area to look for her’. Rather than label him an outright suspect in a conspicuously unsolved high-profile murder, he described him as someone who ‘may have some knowledge’ and left it at that.

As a means of connecting the dots, Sawyer also flagged the note for the attention of the force’s North West Major Crime Squad, which, he noted, had been involved in the Manly assault complaints.1

Over the next three months, little else happened as a result of Denise’s concerns. Eventually, everything would point to the proposition that Guider should be interviewed about Samantha’s disappearance. But, for reasons that remain unclear, Purcell would be unable to do so himself and would relay the intricacies of the task to two of his colleagues, Detective Sergeant Wayne Mathes and Detective Senior Constable David Donohue. The baton change, however, would have disastrous repercussions.

In the meantime and with Guider behind bars awaiting trial, there was apparently no need for urgency. He wasn’t going anywhere, and Purcell would spend the time carrying out background inquiries and compiling a profile on him. As the weeks passed, Purcell would also accept quite a few more of Denise’s calls and repeat his assurances to her that anything she told him was in strict confidence.